La ciudad colonial andina en los ojos de Guamán Poma de Ayala

Abstract

In  his  celebrated  New  Chronicle  and  Good  Government,  Felipe  Guaman  Poma de Ayala emphasizes a vision characteristic of colonial town planning. This article  analyzes  both  the  written  text  and  the  drawings  that  the  Indian  chronicler composed in order to demonstrate that they translate a complex and rich descriptive combination of the urban network which actually existed at the beginning of the 17th century, with a series of spatial ordering, urbanistic and geographical  ideals,  peculiar  to  Andean  imaginary.  Thus,  the  order  of  the  streets  and squares in damero, with the church in the centre, is combined with the statement of network hierarchies of the central places of the pre-hispanic world.